Why I Hate Proprietary Technology

I like books. I like authors. I want to give them money, when I have some to spare. But, with the direction technology has been going, actually paying for books is becoming more difficult than simply stealing them.

Today, Amazon is giving away two free audio books and 30 free days of Audible (why do we have to pay $15/month for Audible when we're already paying for the books themselves??) to anyone who signs up for Audible. "Great!" I thought, "I'll be able to at least listen to part of Stephen Fry's recording of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!"

So I signed up for Audible, found two audio books I wanted and purchased them with credit. Having a stupidly slow internet connection (Thanks, Verizon!), I wanted to actually download these books rather then streaming them from the cloud. So, I click on the "download" button next to the first book in my library. It opens a new page with lots and lots of different places I can download my book to. I want to just download it as an MP3 to my perfectly normal Windows 10 computer. That option is the very last one on a long page. It says I have to install Program 1 (names have been changed for simplicity's sake - the three programs involved have extremely similar names). This is not unexpected, as I know Amazon is highly proprietary, and I have thrice downloaded Kindle for my PC (it always stops working after a couple months for some reason. I have completely given up on Kindle as a result).

I click on the link to download Program 1. That takes me to a page saying I first have to download Program 2, then download Program 1. Well, that's fucking stupid, but OK. I really want to listen to this legitimately-obtained audiobook. I download Program 2 with no issues. After Program 2 is installed, it gives me several options for how to listen to my audiobook: via Program 1, via Windows Media Player, or via iTunes. I haven't used iTunes in over 5 years (it was impossible to use, so I will never touch it again), but I use Windows Media Player for music all the time. So I chose that option.

Then, thinking that maybe I don't need Program 1 after all, I again attempted to download the book. Nope. The download button still takes me to that huge page with all the download options. The last option listed at the bottom of the screen still tells me I need to install Program 1. OK, so I need Program 1 to download, but I can listen to it on something else. Fine, whatever. Unlike my last computer, I have tons of disk space on this computer for a pointless program. It's fine.

So I download and install Program 1. Program 1 then says it has an update. Great, let's just get that out of the way now. It works briefly on its update, then an error pops up saying that Program 1 is trying to close something in an unusual way (whatever that means) and the update is cancelled. Fine. I probably don't need that update anyway.

Back to the library page to click the download button again. Shit. No, it's still taking me to the giant page. The very bottom of the page where the most perfectly normal and average way one might want to download an audio file is listed still says I need to install Program 1. Well, fuck. I did that. It's installed. What the hell do I do now? There's a FAQ, but no troubleshooting guide that I can find.

Oh, the FAQ keeps talking about a free app specifically for Windows 10 that I can get through the Windows Store. Let's call it Program 3. Well, as I said, I have tons and tons of disk space on this computer. Let's go download a third redundant computer program.

Mind you, it has now been about a half hour of work to download these two books and all I have accomplished is downloading two useless programs onto my computer and signing into my Amazon account four times. If I wanted to download these books illegally, I would already have had a 20-minute head start on downloading them, at least. But I persevere. After all, I am a law student studying IP. I want to do things the right way, if possible.

If possible. If not possible, downloading pirated copies is not beyond me.

I open the Windows Store app and search for Program 3. Easily found, thank God, as Audible couldn't just give me a link to it, since it has to be downloaded through the Windows Store. God forbid you have the ability to download this free app anywhere else, right? Program 3, thankfully, does not take long to download and install. Oh joy, I have to sign in to Amazon for a fifth time this morning. Great. Not surprising, but certainly irritating. Also thankfully, once I sign in to Program 3, the books I have purchased automatically show up, with a download option. Programs 1 and 2 seemed entirely disconnected from my Amazon account, despite my signing in. This one is integrated with my account in a logical way. I click to download the first book.

A box pops up. "Streaming is also available! Would you like to turn on streaming?"

FUCK NO. What do you think I've been going through all this trouble for? Why would I download this fucking program if I was just going to stream the damn books? I have three fucking browsers that can do that just fine.

Anyway, I am now in the process of downloading the books, which, thanks to Verizon, will take a few hours.


I used to work at a used book store. We sold audio books. They were on CD and cassette tape. You went to the store, found one you wanted, bought it, then you could just play it on anything that can play CD or cassette. That's it. No downloading special programs. No jumping through hoops to figure out why those programs won't work. No clogging up bandwidth. No monthly fees. Just a fucking physical object and a machine to play it on.

I also remember when buying a computer program meant you could use it forever. Now they're all licensed yearly, for the same price per year that used to get you the program forever. It's all a fucking scam by companies desperate to reduce pirating. But they don't seem to understand that they are driving us to pirating. I definitely prefer to do things the "right" way. But it's a hell of a lot harder than doing it the illegal way. Sometimes, it's simply a choice between pirating or not having it at all. Not because of the price, but because the software the company requires you to use to listen to your audio books doesn't work. If I didn't have Windows 10, I would have to stream these books because Programs 1 and 2 don't work. If my husband also has to do something on the internet, thanks to Verizon's shitty, shitty internet, I couldn't listen to the books. And there is no reason for that except Amazon's paranoia about pirating.

Education v. Training

 [UPDATE: Just read this comic instead: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2729]

I write this today primarily as a public announcement of my intention to curtail my computer use and increase my book usage. I may begin using this blog to share my thoughts about things I am reading and thus encourage myself to focus not just on taking in the information from the books I am reading, but to engage with the writing and develop critical thinking skills.

By most measures, I am a well educated person: two Associates degrees, a Bachelors degree, and almost halfway through a J.D. I've been in school for approximately 24 years now, starting at age 5.

Yet, I increasingly feel like I have had nothing more than a sporadic and meagre education. I also feel more and more like any education I have actually received has been of my own doing and not through anything required at any school I went to. My years of schooling have, for the most part, been mere training, not education.

What is the difference between training and education?

To me, the difference lies in which skills are being emphasized. Training involves practical skills. How to sit still, how to listen, how to follow directions, how to get along with others, how to tie your shoes, how to line up and calmly walk out the door when the fire alarm goes off, how to read, how to do basic math, how to draw so there isn't a gap between the ground and the sky, how to fill out scantrons, how to take standardized tests, how to do simple science experiments, how to write checks, how to not get pregnant,  how to fill out job applications, how to fill out FAFSA forms, how to figure out what the professor wants you to say so you get higher grades, how to write an essay, how to use computer programs, how to deal with bureaucracies. Most of these things are very important to know generally. Some of them simply make teachers' or school administrators' or government officials' lives easier and have no value in and of themselves.

Education is less obviously practical. Education requires a logical step before one sees any usefulness in it. Education is inherently philosophical in nature. It is less about "how to" and more about "why to." Having an education will of course mean that one knows how to do something, because the practical skills often go along with the philosophical understanding. But mainly it is a different type of "how to": how to think critically, how to analyze, how analogize, how to contextualize.

Only the very basics of these higher-order skills are taught in American public schools.

Schools* teach classes that provide a basic groundwork of a liberal arts education - science, math, reading, language arts, social studies, foreign languages, art, and music (well, among those schools that still bother teaching art and music, anyway). But, as anyone who has spent time in a typical American classroom knows, before college, most of class time is spent either on busy work or on keeping a small number of students from disrupting the class. There is little time spent discussing what we have read, and the "discussion" is primarily based on facts, not analysis. Quizzes and tests mostly only tell the teacher whether a student has done the reading, and at most ask if the student understood the reading. They never ask whether the student can analyze, contextualize, critique, or analogize the writing. "Did you do what you were told to do?" and "Do you have basic reading comprehension skills?" should be questions teachers stop having to ask after elementary school, if students are receiving an education and not just training.

And yet these questions continue to be the most important ones teachers want answers to up through college! The required "liberal arts" courses at many colleges are little more than a continuation of high school classes with fewer disruptive students, but larger class sizes. Read this, regurgitate its facts, maybe do some simple analysis or analogy, move on to the next thing. Only a couple of people participate, the rest are mere warm bodies in seats, assuming they bother showing up for class. The tests are easy and primarily fact-based or repeat the simple analysis already done in class (thus only answering the questions "were you in class?" and "did you pay attention in class?") so that grading can be uniform. It is not until the upper-level courses, when one has chosen a specialty, that one begins getting an education in that topic. But even then, the emphasis is often on simple analogy and basic critique and is never cross-disciplinary. For those majoring in something "practical," (i.e., there's a job title in the name of the major) the upper level classes focus almost entirely on practical skills.

So, most of us either essentially go without an education or we have to teach ourselves.

I have been somewhat trying to give myself an education, simply by reading a lot of various books. I have a theory that a focus on reading primary sources (and good translations of primary sources) can increase critical thinking skills, simply because the material isn't being analyzed for the reader as in a secondary source. Unfortunately, since starting law school,** I have had less time to read non-legal primary sources.

I have, however, maintained plenty of time for Twitter and video games.

A simple solution reveals itself.




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*When I say "schools" I am talking only about American public schools, and am mostly generalizing from my own personal experience. I have no clue whatsoever what private schools teach. That is an entirely different world than the one I am familiar with.

** Law school is, at its heart, a trade school. The purpose of going to law school is to learn how to do a specific job. However, the professors have to write all these academic articles and like to believe that law school is not a trade school, but an academic pursuit. Thus, strangely, law school provides something of an education, though only in law. Tests are heavily focused on analysis and are frequently open-book after the first year. Meanwhile, law school fails at being a trade school because it provides little training in the practical skills needed to be a lawyer. It's a strange world we live in.